About Oxygen Therapy for Lung Cancer

Oxygen therapy is a treatment to relieve the shortness of breath that can be caused by lung cancer. Find out how oxygen tanks can be portable for patients with lung cancer with help from a nurse and respiratory care practitioner in this free video on respiratory therapy and healthy breathing.

Video Transcript

I will speak to you briefly about oxygen therapy in lung cancer. One, oxygen does not cure cancer. It's a treatment of, for the, to relieve the breathlessness or the shortness of breath that lung cancer can cause; especially when the person is upon exertion and lying down. Many times lying on their back they become very short winded or when they are exerted. Some of the ways that you can treat with the O2 are oxygen therapy. It's a concentrated, which is an electrical means that's like, looks like a box with the flow meter on that has safe beds inside that takes the nitrogen out of the air and puts it into oxygen. And so it makes oxygen and that way you can connect the canals to it and the person puts the canals on the nose and they breath oxygen. Small tanks are in also use so they could be portable and they can go wherever the patient needs to go. You can have a shoulder harness to carry with you. Some of these tanks especially the larger, the small tanks that you can push around the cart last about five hours and the small ones last about two hours. If they're completely fill at 2200 lbs. per square inch. There's also liquid oxygen that will help and that it can be refilled but at home. Often oxygen levels and the blood of the cancer patient is, is not really low initially. But in chronic lung disease, however, as you can would know that it is. But, many times a cancer of the lung will qualify for oxygen; sometimes in a doctor's office and that seems startling I guess, but many times initially, the patient does not present well with no oxygen levels when you test them, except on exertion of when they're lying flat. So they have to, they have to have knowledge of what you're looking for when a patient has to be qualified to be able to use oxygen on, when they have a lung cancer diagnosis. So it's going to take someone with knowledge, preferably a Pulmonologist or your Medical Doctor and a Respiratory Therapist that has worked with patients for awhile to know how to qualify patient with lung cancer. And you say, "Well, I need to be qualified because insurances ask for certain numbers and you have to know what positions these lung cancer patient presents with the lowest numbers.